One of the most important and popular concepts we teach in our innovation workshops is “Yes, and...” Borrowed from improv comedy, it is a mindset and approach that builds upon what others suggest rather than blocking the flow of possibilities. So, when an opportunity or idea is suggested, instead of responding with ways the idea wouldn’t work - which often feels like the responsible thing to do, the protocol – no matter what the suggestion – is to respond with an enthusiastic “Yes, and…”, then build on the idea in wonderful and unexpected directions.​2017 has been a catalytic year for CoreAlign and “Yes, and...”

​I’m the kind of person that doesn’t change easily. I have regular food regret when I deviate from menu options or recipes that I know I love; I tend to buy variations of the same outfit, in the same color palette (think Crayola BOLD markers); I pick up new hobbies and shed them just as quickly, preferring things that are tried and true (watching tv, baking, the occasional run). At 41 weeks pregnant, I’m the only person I know who felt like, “hey, there’s no rush.” I would say that I flee from change, but the reality is that I hunker down until things shift and settle around me, and then I pick up where I left off.​

​Raise your hand if you hated group work in school. Go on, raise it. Did the mention of a group assignment have you sliding down your chair, dreading the forced get-togethers with random classmates, the canned presentations, the uninspired project display? In most cases, these weren’t people’s best efforts -- usually, one person, unwilling to cede control, would do the bulk of the work.

For me, like for so many of us, the first few weeks after the election were a haze of confusion and despair. How was it possible that for all the progress we thought we’d made in the last ten years, we were being buried under an avalanche of redness – House, Senate, White House and soon Supreme Court? And not just middle of the road conservatism, but blatant, ugly, violent, apocalyptic racism, misogyny, xenophobia and homophobia.​

Welcome to our Experiments in Real Time Series, where our Round 2 Innovaton Lab teams share how they are collaborating, testing out ideas, failing, and trying again as they work through these pieces in real time.

Our first team to be profiled is Team Sweet Spot, the only Round 2 lab team to form at CoreAlign’s Innovation Convening during the Love, Sex, Family, and Community Art Space activity. Our Round 2 lab teams are currently in the Formation and Launch phase, where they are determining what they will need as individuals and as teams to collaborate boldly and authentically. Given Team Sweet Spot’s unique origin story, we asked ask each team member to share a little bit about how their team launched, and how their visions will shape how their work moves forward.

By Sujatha Jesudason, Executive Director, CoreAlignI have stopped reading the newspaper and listening to the latest analysis of the presidential transition. For somebody who spent hours reading and listening to the news, this is a jarring change.​I stopped when I realized that each egregious announcement normalized and minimized the previous outrageous act – conflicts of interest, hate crimes, emboldened racists, Steve Bannon, Nikki Haley, Betsy DeVos, Rick Perry, the list goes on. It is not like I needed any of this information to confirm that Americans and the American system had somehow elected a fear mongering, narcissistic, racist, sexual predator, white man to the presidency. And yet, each new cycle in the avalanche allowed for the burial of the previously unthinkable act, such that the shocking became the norm and increasingly less offensive each day.